The reason why our most desperate poor are not anywhere near as desperate as these children is because the dynamic forefathers of this country cleared bush and drained swamps to create pasture for dairy cows thus creating the wealth that provides the education and opportunities that our children enjoy today.

Ethical shopping might include buying Indonesian Toilet paper thus providing Indonesia with a little hard currency to help improve the lot of the Indonesian poor?

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I think the big issue is that the land is sold to foreign owners for far too cheap a price, then the land cleared and the native timbers yielding a huge profit that doesn't cost in the damage to the environment or the proper amount of taxes due to the government to in turn hand back to the people who live there.

I think it is reminiscent of the land for beads and blankets deals of the past - totally one-sided and unjust.

This is the effect of a corrupt trickle down process, and it disgusts me. Multinational corporations have a poor history in these places.

The ethical shopping plea might be coming at the tail end of a process that is already too late, but it at least seems to be an attempt to say that we have to value people more than the Indonesian Government (their representatives) and the multinationals exploiting the profits (enough to pay the board and management teams ridiculous bonuses something better.

It's one of the reasons I think people turn to socialism and lefty thinking rather than an ethical right wing response.

There is no doubt that development and trade can bring the quality of living up for these people, and that is not to be denied to them. It just needs to be done in a sustainable and ecologically sensible way, and the current approach is not just, IMHO.

They have a share of global oil resources of 0.4 but contributed 16% in the early days. That should have made them all rich, but did not. Now that reserves are in decline and they import more than they export, and are out of OPEC they are turning towards decimating natural resources, and again, the profits of this will not see the common people.

At least in our society, the benefits of a strong economy are largely felt by all.

We are not a majority Islamic population though, which has something to do with this too.

Awesome. And after the inconvenient orang utans have been exterminated and every square foot of Indonesia set generating profits for foreign companies, and there's a new crop of kids sifting through the garbage, what then? Trash the oceans as well?

A high birth rate in a subsistance economy = starvation, sickness and death for significant numbers of people - orang utans are responsible for it to no extent whatsoever.

Perhaps since these are little yellow people their proper place in the scheme of things is a plentiful supply of cheap labour to sweat shops to produce the crap you buy for your kids at the wharehouse and that if they are allowed to develop their own natural resources they might get ideas above their station.